Something I like to do with albums that are short and fast is to write the review during a single playthrough. That's usually my modus operandi, but most albums are at least 30 minutes if not more, so doing this for an album that doesn't even touch 25 feels like a race against the clock, but also not one that pushes the urgency too far for me to actually put some thought into the writing. For example I had enough time to do the research to tell you that Dead Set is not only the only King Parrot album that was reviewed here before, but also the only one that went on for longer than 30 minutes. So this kind of short and sweet runtime isn't new for King Parrot, and reviewing Bite Your Head Off during its 23 minutes would be a slightly more challenging task.
Short runtimes are generally pretty fit for hardcore punk related stuff, including grindcore, so nothing out of the ordinary on that front. But runtimes aside, what has always made King Parrot memorable for me is that, even with all the punk aggression specific for grindcore, a lot of it is quite metal leaning. That includes some vocals and riffing that is pulled from death metal, but that deathgrind is contrasted with a lot of crossover thrash (I mean it was even referenced in the band's debut EP, The Stench Of Hardcore Pub Trash), especially in the Exodus-esque vocals. Even though that's quite generally valid for King Parrot's music, having their fast and aggressive music pull from different sources does make their sound stand out from the crowd.
As for A Young Person's Guide To King Parrot specifically, the band took a five year gap since the last release, the Holed Up In The Lair EP, and they make it pretty clear in the Bandcamp description for this album that the band put a lot more effort into the album on the production front, meticulously trying to ace how each instrument should sound. Indeed, the album's sound is quite good, even if I don't quite feel wowed by its sound quality, but what's most important is that the effort doesn't compromise the raw energy. The whole "guide" presentation is something I don't exactly get conceptually, with the lyrics being something that clearly had a lot of though put into, but not something that feels especially conceptual or tied with the album's title, though I did appreciate how surprisingly personal the lyrics were.
So it's short and doesn't overstay its welcome, it's fast and aggressive, has some diversity in sound in its short runtime, and A Young Person's Guide To King Parrot clearly had quite some thought put into it, both songwriting and production-wise, at least by thrashy punk standards.
